Category: Top Dog

9 week old lab x boxer mix puppy, we picked her up 4 days ago. She is just so lovely, friendly, outgoing on first visit. We fell in love.

Upon bringing her home Saturday morning, she seemed to settle in quickly, and was very happy being with myself and my partner. Putting her to bed wasn’t easy, she needed to be stroked to sleep and then quietly transferred to crate. Her first night was perfect, no potty accidents (we took her out every 1-2 hours to the garden). She was very happy to go back in her crate freely at night when coming back in from potty break.

Come the second day. We know she is supposed to be sleeping 20 hours a day, yet she just wouldn’t go down to nap. Instead she goes hyper, biting and attacking carpet. We expected destructive tendencies because she’s a puppy, but the concern is that she is clearly overtired yet won’t go to sleep during the day. We do this routine – food, water, potty, crate. We take her to the crate and she climbs on our laps (we can’t put her or lock her in crate when she’s awake because she panics) and we have to stroke her for 10-20-30 mins for her to dose off enough to sleep and transfer for crate. On this day my partner and I did not sleep at all! Due to her constantly needing to be watched since she won’t go in crate, and since we need to “put her to sleep”. We didn’t eat at all that day, just not a moment to do it.

Day 3 came around, this was the lowest so far (yesterday). Even though we had a perfect night of her sleeping and being taken out 3 times in the night to potty, the moment she wakes in the morning she is biting so hard at only me (I’m a woman) and not my male partner. Whenever I try to redirect her to chew toys or any distraction, she just bites harder. I try the tree method. She attacks my legs. I try to walk away. She follow me and bites hard. I don’t make any vocal expression during because this makes her bite even harder. Putting on her leash is almost impossible for me because she bites. At this point we haven’t slept for 36 hours. We just don’t know what to do because we need her to be contained in a safe place while we look after our own basic needs, at least 1 meal a day and a shower and fresh clothes. Yet she just will not tolerate being left alone, in a room or in her crate. She goes into complete panic and thrashes around.

What we’ve done to get her used to the crate – 4 meals a day in crate. Treats in crate for doing tricks. Walking away from crate and giving her treat upon return. She does it perfectly yet when it’s time to nap, she just will not tolerate being alone.

My partner has had to take a few days off work to help me because we are even struggling the two of us , to constantly be in the room with her and we take turns when the other needs to go to the toilet or try have something to eat (we feel sick from the sleep deprivation).

We’ve spoken to the breeder after last night, and she’s agreed to take her back. We just cannot go another night without sleep we are going insane. We don’t know what we’re doing wrong, we’ve watched all the videos on what to do and it just doesn’t seem to work with her. I know she’s a baby and needs reassurance, but is it really normal that all new puppy owners stay constantly in the room with puppy and never eat, never sleep never go to the toilet? We’ve been told this could last weeks. Week of never being able to cook a meal? Of never closing that door? My partner goes back to work tomorrow and I’ll have to do it all alone, I have no idea how I will manage, we couldn’t even handle it the two of us on 24/7 duty.

We have been able to train her to leave it, sit, waiting before eating from bowl, and she is happy to walk in and out of crate. She is happy on a leash now. She’s never had a toilet accident in the house. This is because we are very diligent taking her out so often. She is a very smart girl.

Please help us because it just doesn’t feel right taking her back to the breeder. I want to make this work but I need 2 basic needs met each day to function and be able to give her my best effort. And what I need is : 1 quick shower a day and at least 1 meal. I have no appetite and just feel sick with this situation. Please please help us we are desperate.

9 month old corgi. She’s normally really good and doesn’t care when we take her harness off after a walk but every so often she’ll get defensive about it and gnaw at anyone that goes for it. It doesn’t really hurt, but it’s still not something I want to encourage.

No issues putting it on, no reasons (afaik) for her to do this, she just randomly decides to be mean to me. Any ideas? This is basically her only big issue so I’d love to figure it out.

I have a 2 year old male rescue. He‘s only been with me a few weeks and over all he’s a good dog, crate trained and housebroken. He’s a mix, best guess is Shepherd/Husky/Hound or something. He is constantly sniffing obsessively outside and literally screams at bunnies and squirrels so I know his prey drive is strong. The thing that’s been most challenging though is his behavior inside when we have certain foods, he literally goes nuts sniffing and jumping uncontrollably. Not with all foods but we had pizza one night and I made sausage another time and it’s like he is in a trance and nothing (I’ve tried all the high value treats) can break him out of it.

I’m really concerned as he’s a jumper and no baby gate can stop him even if I wanted to gate him from the kitchen I can’t. I don’t want to crate him, as he is just starting to go into the crate without any protesting so I don’t want to associate it negatively

Thanks for your advice.

Hey everyone! I was thinking about how most dog lovers have that one dog they never forget. The first one, or the one that just understood you in a special way.

What dog had the biggest impact on your life? Was it your childhood dog, a rescue, or one you met unexpectedly?

Also, do you think dogs choose us as much as we choose them?

I’ve seen a lot of comments lately saying beagles are “not suitable” pets because they’re loud, stubborn, and impossible to train. I’m curious how true that actually is.

For people who own (or have owned) beagles—what’s your real experience? Are they genuinely a poor choice for most households, or is it more about understanding the breed and meeting their needs?

Would love to hear honest pros/cons.

My dog is 4, had her 2.5 of those. She wasn’t toilet trained when we got her and initially would have some accidents if not let out during the night. She is much better now but has a habit of asking to go out at around this time every night (2.30am!) that’s after walk / lots of wee’s before bed around 9pm? I know she could hold it, but is it fair to ignore her (which is what I would need to do to get her out of this habit!!?) or should I just be grateful she’s stopped going inside? She sleeps downstairs and is quite needy so I suspect part of the habit is that she wants to see us (I don’t interact with her at this time just let her in / out).

Has this happened to anyone else? I dropped my dog off at a Dog Boarding/Daycare place while I'm at work, and the lady who runs it claims my dog was barking too much and distracting the other dogs so I had to come pick him up. It seemed very odd to me because I was under the impression barking dogs were common at daycare.

Anyways, I found a new place that has watched him for the past 3 days and they said he's been great and is barely barking. Just wondering if anyone has had this kind of issue before.

Me and my wife got two lab mix breeds when they were puppies, two girls from the same litter. She had never had dogs before, I had had two small dogs. They are now 11 months old. I’ve crate trained them and potty trained them and they are just the sweetest things. I was able to play and exercise them with walks and outside time and able to afford food. Everything with them was okay apart from an accident here or there and some chewed up things, we’ve deemed to be separation anxiety when I would leave for work. Then me and my wife found out we were having a baby! Throughout pregnancy things got a little worse they would have more accidents and more occasions of chewing things up that they shouldn’t be. My wife started getting really annoyed with them to the point it would stress her out to leave anything unattended downstairs with them. I wasn’t able to walk them as much because I was busy preparing our 2 bedroom condo for our baby. The stress level started to rise. Then our baby came and i was hoping it would get better but it’s gotten a lot worse. The dogs are great with the baby, not aggressive at all or anything it’s not that. They started acting out more, it would be an everyday thing were there was either an accident or something would be destroyed. And my wife’s postpartum aversion towards them has reached a point where everyone in the house is so stressed. I want to make sure my wife and child are comfortable and stress free, bottom line. I love my dogs but I don’t think with this life change that I can give them the attention they need to work out the stress and energy when I am taking care of my family. We’ve tried different things but my wife still doesn’t like them anymore and they still have issues that cause us stress. My attachment to them and their attachment to each other has me really hesitant about re homing them. I don’t want them to be separated and I really don’t want to be separated from them either. But I would do whatever I need to for my wife and child.

(BOOK= Control Unleashed Reactive To Relaxed by McDevitt Leslie)i own a GSD,im planning to buy this book, to give me my dog offleash training, is it a good book? , or does it serve a different purpose?

I have a 5-year old GSD I got earlier this year — all of my dogs have been neutered before, but he’s a rescue so he came intact. He was having some health issues so our vet suggested putting off sedation so we could figure out the problem. He’s done really well with training and his confidence has improved a lot, he’s super eager to learn, but he also has some pretty obsessive behaviors (especially with other dogs) where he’s less focused in training or straight up tries to ignore me

He’s still a sensitive guy and I’ve seen some people say their dog’s anxiety ended up worsening or they seemed depressed.

I will be talking to vets about it, just wondering what people’s experiences are with chemical castration, and thoughts are on neutering at 5 years?